1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a reproducing apparatus, and more particularly to an arrangement for processing information on a recording date and time included in a reproduced signal.
2. Description of Related Art
The known reproducing apparatuses of the above-stated kind include camera-integrated type video tape recorders (VTRs). Some of the camera-integrated type VTRs are arranged to record, during the recording of a video image, date-and-time information (information on the date, the time or the date and time of recording) together with a video signal obtained by the image pickup operation, for example, to the effect that characters indicative of the date and time of recording are superimposed on the video image. Such a method of recording date-and-time information together with a video signal enables the date and time of recording to be readily recognized at the time of reproduction of the recorded video image.
In a case where the date-and-time information is thus recorded in the form of characters superimposed on the video image, the date-and-time information is always displayed on a reproduced picture plane. Therefore, the display of the date-and-time information occasionally hinders reproduced images from being appreciated.
In view of such a problem, there has been developed a method of recording the date-and-time information independently of the video signal, without superimposing the characters of the date-and-time information on the video image, and, at the time of reproduction, of forming characters on the basis of the date-and-time information and superimposing the characters on the reproduced images only when so desired. This method effectively prevents appreciation of reproduced images from being hindered, since the date-and-time information is displayed only when it is necessary, and is not always displayed on the reproduced picture plane.
According to the method of recording the date-and-time information independently of the video signal, the display of the date-and-time information is generally arranged to be turned on or off as desired by the user. If a date-and-time display switch is left in its on-state, the date and time of recording are always recognizable. In this case, however, a part of the reproduced image is hidden, at the time of reproduction, by the display of the date-and-time information, as in the case of the above-stated method of recording the date-and-time information in the form of characters superimposed on the video image.
Generally, in most cases, the date-and-time information, particularly the information on the date, is required only at the beginning of each scene of recorded images and is not necessary thereafter. Therefore, in a case where the date-and-time information has been recorded independently of the video signal, the user must operate the date-and-time display switch to turn it on and off repeatedly every time the recorded scenes change from one scene over to another. For the user, however, such an operation is extremely troublesome.
It is a general object of the invention to solve the problems mentioned in the foregoing.
It is a more specific object of the invention to eliminate the troublesomeness in regard to the display of information on the date and time of recording.
It is another object of the invention to make a display of date-and-time information possible at any desired timing without hindering reproduced images from being appreciated.
To attain the above objects, in accordance with an aspect of the invention, there is provided a reproducing apparatus, which comprises reproducing means for reproducing from a recording medium a video signal and date-and-time information related to the video signal, character forming means for forming a character signal on the basis of the date-and-time information reproduced by the reproducing means, and control means for controlling a character forming action of the character forming means according to the date-and-time information reproduced by the reproducing means.
These and other objects and features of the invention will become apparent from the following detailed description of a preferred embodiment thereof taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.